Companies deploying SAP Jam Collaboration demonstrated an increased return on investment (ROI) through faster access to information, decreased employee training costs, and reduced time spent on closing deals, according to a study commissioned by SAP SE and conducted by Forrester Consulting.
The July 2016 study calculated the total economic impact (TEI) of SAP Jam through a combination of qualitative and financial analyses from a portion of SAP’s customer base. The study found that the enterprises using SAP Jam reported a combined net present value (NPV) of more than $19 million and an ROI increase of 11 per cent from a previous study in 2015.
The study points to several strategic areas where SAP Jam can add business value:
- Faster access to information and expertise. On average, employees using SAP Jam were 15 per cent more efficient at locating information and expertise. The collaboration platform decreased the number of hours per week spent emailing, searching for information and awaiting responses.
- Reduced costs and time to train and onboard new employees through co-creation of training content and less travel. SAP Jam provides a community where new hires can work together on onboarding activities and receive support from experts in other departments, and enabled organisations to eliminate travel for training by providing a platform to enhance virtual learning opportunities.
- A reduction in time to close deals. The average time required to close a deal decreased by 9 per cent, shaving off about 10 hours from every deal put together by a team.
- A reduction in licenses for redundant or poorly adopted collaboration software. Because individual areas of the organisations studied invested in point-product collaboration tools, the use SAP Jam reduced the overlap in those licenses by 20 per cent.
Art Schoeller, vice president and principal analyst, Forrester, wrote in the March 2016 report, Define Business Value in Collaboration, that sales, customer service and the supply chain were initial areas where collaboration adds measurable business value, and once organisations achieve success in one or more of those roles, they could commonly look to adopt collaboration more broadly to build on this success.
“It’s clear that customers are willing to invest in collaboration technology that can help increase ROI,” said Daisy Hernandez, global vice president of product management, enterprise collaboration, SAP.
“As our customers look to digitally transform their businesses, we will continue to support them by building meaningful business applications that reflect how people want to work and how customers want to engage.”
